A Hymn to Youth

The Happy Foreigner — By Enid Bagnold

If Miss Bagnold had chosen that her heroine should lead the most sheltered and protected life that is left for a young woman to endure, we are confident that there would have blossomed within its narrow boundaries flowers as rich and as delicate as those which Fanny gathered on the strange roads of France. For she understands how it is vain to seek adventure unless there is the capacity for adventure within us—and if that is there, may it not be satisfied within four walls or the circle of lamplight? This generation assures us it may. Beauty looks in at the window. Experience knocks at the door. Why should one wander? Nevertheless, though the spirit of adventure may sing, may lament, exult, within our bosom's cage, there are moments when the old longing comes over us to fare forth, to put ourselves to the test, to lose ourselves in other countries, other lives, to give what we have in exchange for what we want, and thus to acquire strange unfamiliar treasure. But these moments pass very quickly. Few are brave enough to recognize them. They pass, and the wonderful light quivers on the walls, is like a pool of silver in the lamp-shine, and Beauty mounts guard at the window and Experience stands with a drawn sword at the door. But this sad ending cannot happen to Miss Bagnold, for ‘The Happy Foreigner’ exists for a proof of how she ventured, and to tell how great was her reward. Here is the plot.

Fanny, an English girl, goes to France at the end of the war and drives a car for the French Army. She falls in love, but it comes to nothing, and the end might be the page 224 beginning. That is all. Who Fanny is, what her life has been up till the moment she is discovered for us ‘stretched upon the table of the Y.W.C.A.’ in Paris, on her way to Bar-le-Duc, we are not told. She remains from first to last an unknown young woman, secret, folded within herself, a ‘happy foreigner.’ She is almost without fear; nothing can overwhelm her or cast her down, because it is her nature, and unchangeable, to find in all things a grain of living beauty. We have the feeling that she is, above all, unbroken. Driving in the rain, in the darkness, in the snow, living in a paper cubicle, with the bright eyes of a rat peering at her, enduring cold and vile food, being covered in mud from head to foot—these things happen to her, but she passes them by. They do not matter. They are incidents on the journey, but they are not more. Praise be to Miss Bagnold for giving us a new heroine, a pioneer, who sees, feels, thinks, hears, and yet is herself full of the sap of life. ‘The Happy Foreigner’ ends upon a note of happiness:

To-morrow I shall be gone. The apple blossom is spread to large wax flowers, and the flowers will fall and never breed apples. They will sweep this room, and Philippe's mother will come and sit in it and make it sad. So many things will happen in the evening. So many unripe thoughts ripen before the fire. Turk, Bulgar, German,—Me. Never to return. When she comes into the room the apple-flowers will stare at her across the desert of my absence, and wonder who she is! I wonder if I can teach her anything. Will she keep the grill on the wood fire? And the blue birds flying on the bed? It is like going out of life—tenderly leaving one's little arrangements to the next comer….

And drawing her chair up to the table, she lit the lamp and sat down to write her letter.